\u201cMaestro, how are you. I have followed your footsteps thanks to Drexler and I am amazed at what you do. I wanted to know if for some reason you would pass through Miami in the future. Or where your base is, to meet you one day and be able to see the possibility of taking a course on d\u00e9cimas. A strong hug.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was the first message from Juanes that I received, via Instagram, in May 2019. Imagine my surprise. Who doesn\u2019t know Juanes? The Colombian artist who accumulates the splendid number of 25 Grammy awards and whose success transcends the borders of the Spanish language. (He has fan groups in Germany, Poland, France, Australia, etc.). As they say in Spain, I went crazy. Juanes wanted to take a course with me!<\/p>\n
I already had a beautiful portfolio of illustrious students within the world of song (Drexler, Rozal\u00e9n, Zenet, Ruibal, Vicky Gastelo, Gema Hern\u00e1ndez, Nano Stern, Pala, Marta G\u00f3mez, Pedro Pastor, Mr. Kilombo and many others; by the way, only a few Cubans: only Gerardo Alfonso many years ago and recently Amanda Cepero), but Juanes arrived, as Drexler would say, \u201cfrom another galaxy.\u201d<\/p>\n
And my response was immediate: \u201cDear and admired Juanes, what a pleasure to receive your message, what a joy that you know my work, and that you like it. I live in Spain, and I don\u2019t know Miami, but I will be happy to organize a course with you. It would be beautiful.\u201d And it really was, has been, is being!<\/p>\n
A few months later I went on a tour of New York, Boston and Puerto Rico, but the trip to Miami and the class project were aborted because our agendas did not coincide: he was traveling. Juanes insisted on lessons with me, and I was still happy with the idea of \u200b\u200bmaterializing it. But then something happened that paralyzed the world: the pandemic arrived. We also ended up trapped, I in my house in Seville, he in his house in Miami. And at this stage, which was a real social, professional, and domestic calamity, we saw an opportunity, ugly, but ideal, to start classes.<\/p>\n
I was precisely immersed in my online teaching project, Oralitura Academy, with daily courses on all kinds of subjects (improvisation, d\u00e9cima, song, rap, theater impro, oral narration, etc.) and of course I opened a space (a time) for classes with Juanes. Two or three days a week we met via Zoom. And in the first minutes we talked about life, the pandemic, children, family, everything that worried us, and then we immersed ourselves in the class, that is, in the Pimienta Method.<\/p>\n
We started from scratch. He wanted to start from scratch. He wanted to discover and learn everything about the d\u00e9cima. The first thing that surprised me (I think everyone who knows him) was his humility, his transparency and his desire to learn \u201cfor real.\u201d Those of us who are teachers know it: there is something in the look of good apprentices that leaves no room for misunderstanding, that is told with the eyes: \u201cI\u2019m here, teach me, I want to learn everything you know.\u201d And that type of student conquers you, makes you fall in love, makes you a better teacher than you are, because you learn with them to teach better.<\/p>\n
The Pimienta Method (the same one I used to create a Chair at ISA in 2000 and more than 70 improvisation schools in Cuba as of 2003; the same one I have used in Spain since 1998; the method used \u2015 with a book \u2015 in most schools of improvisation in Latin America (in Puerto Rico, Colombia, Panama, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, even in Brazil); the Pimienta Method, I mean, method and homonymous book, is a compendium of linguistic and poetics games created by me for the development of memory, vocabulary, the ability for rhyme and synonymy, the mastery of metrics and stanzas, the writing of the d\u00e9cima and finally improvisation.<\/p>\n
But, watch out!: Juanes didn\u2019t want to learn to improvise, that was the first thing he told me. He just wanted to learn d\u00e9cimas to use them \u201cas raw material\u201d for his songs. And that\u2019s how we focused on the classes. We spent several months during the pandemic, two and three days a week, happy, he with his learning, and I with my teaching, both \u201cplaying at being poets.\u201d And I no longer remember at what point in the course he invited me to write songs together.<\/p>\n
He told me about his new album project. He told me about his daily life. And of the pandemic. And of the family. And how he felt the need to tell and sing about all that, but that he wanted to do it in d\u00e9cimas, because he was in love with d\u00e9cimas, just like two of his great references, Jorge Drexler and Joaqu\u00edn Sabina. Thanks to the two of them, he told me, he had discovered me. And he had discovered that the d\u00e9cima was (is) a beautiful stanza to make songs.<\/p>\n
I agreed, of course. I told him that I had been writing song lyrics in d\u00e9cima for several years and had collaborated with various singers on albums and concerts. Songs with my lyrics (d\u00e9cimas and sonnets) have been made by Colombians Pala and Marta G\u00f3mez, Chilean Nano Stern, Cubans Manolo Bas, B\u00e1rbara Mili\u00e1n and Rub\u00e9n Aguiar, Mexicans Memo Brise\u00f1o and Frino, Spaniards Fran Fern\u00e1ndez and Zenet, to name some examples). And there are many international artists who have incorporated the Spanish classical stanza into their repertoire: Drexler, Kanka, Ruibal, Pedro Pastor, Mr. Kilombo, Pia Tedesco, all of them after passing through my classes.<\/p>\n